Uninspired
Mass Effect, Inspired Inventor
04
"Hello beautiful," I murmured as I ran my hand over the sleek piece of tech in front of me.
"I'm jealous. You invite me over to visit and spent all your time showing off some machine," Kelly rolled her eyes.
"You should be. You can't teleport people and things, or assemble things on a molecular level, either from other things or from pure energy. Need to up your skills," I teased, and she stuck her tongue out.
"Still, it's all kind of overwhelming. I can't believe you've done all of this in the short time since you left the orphanage. Did you know, we had to hire armed security to keep the media vultures out?"
"That sucks."
"It's kind of good though. The school's gotten a lot of extra funding," she shrugged, before frowning. "But now basically everyone is going around saying they were your best friend and how they always knew you were special and other garbage."
"Don't worry about it too much. I'm sure it'll blow over eventually," I shook my head.
Sighing, the brunette nodded. "Guess so. Anyway, it's getting late. I should get going. You know how they are about curfew."
"Alpha, can you take her home for me?"
"Of course, sir. I'll have the shuttle here in a moment."
I saw Kelly out and onto the shuttle, the girl grinning like a loon as she made her way inside and strapped in, before it took off. I told Alpha to give her a bit of a show on the way back, before heading inside and back down to the lab and the new piece of equipment.
"Shall I have it sent up now, sir?" Alpha asked. Now that Kelly was gone, she could speak freely.
"Yes, please Alpha. The sooner we get this sucker to Mercury and get our manufacturing plant made, the better. I want a stockpile of naquadah, rare elements, and universal parts ASAP. But make sure we actually use it to make a copy to keep in the underwater base and speed up production on Earth, before we send it up. What about the survey of Mars? Find anything?"
"I have, sir. I've discovered underground structures at the south pole, along with anomalous energy readings," she reported, as the rectangular cube disappeared in a flash of white light and a note of sound. "There were no life signs. There were, however, signs of power in use."
"Excellent," I grinned, already itching to take the Phoenix and go look for myself.
The Mars find was good news. It meant I could start getting Earth moving on the Mass Effect tech tree faster than they had in what I remembered of ME canon. Additionally, we had drones around Charon, working to free the relay from the ice. Soon enough, we'd have that free, then the revelation of aliens and the wider galaxy would be out of the bag.
"Alright, Alpha. I want you to announce their presence and start putting together teams to explore and study them—both the Martian site and the relay. The best of the best. After we see that's causing those energy readings. It should take, how long?"
"A few days, sir," Alpha supplied. "I'm sending in a small ship with drones to investigate the ruins."
"Excellent. Record everything. The footage will go a long way towards convincing people. Going to be a lot of work, though…"'
"Sir, perhaps we should begin hiring other people to start taking care of these things. You should hire an assistant or two. We have the money for an entire department," Alpha pointed out. "More, soon."
"Yeah, alright. Sounds good. Think you could find some people for me? And in the meantime, how about instead of just sending drones, we hop over on the Phoenix and explore it ourselves? It'll be another first to add to our growing list. First human faster than light flight. First human on every planet in the solar system that isn't Earth. And now, first human to explore alien ruins!"
"Very well, sir. But I must insist that you take appropriate precautions. You've put it off long enough. The spider-based formula is complete and has finished testing and trial runs. Please use it."
I considered the blonde gynoid for a moment, before nodding. I followed her into the medical research section of the lab and fished out a spider. After letting it bite me, I made my way upstairs to sleep it off.
"I want to be ready to leave as soon as I'm up."
Alpha nodded. "I'll have everything ready, sir."
"I almost can't believe it's real," I murmured, stepping out of the artificial gravity envelope, into Mars' 1/3 Earth gravity.
Thrusters on my palms and feet flared to life and I flew ahead. I crossed the short distance to Deseado Crater, and the equipment set up there. There were a couple of habitation units for future exploration and research teams to use, along with a large equipment elevator shaft, and in the center of the crater the dirt had been scraped away to reveal metal. Metal with very obvious seams in it, which clearly marked it as a ship-sized hatch.
We joined a number of flying quadrotor drones equipped with cameras and all kinds of sensors on the elevator, along with one of Alpha's physical bodies. It was a bit surreal to see an elf girl dressed in a maid's uniform, standing casually in the Martian atmosphere without a space suit.
"Going down," she announced, and activated the controls.
The interior was actually well-lit as we came to a stop, overlooking a large hangar bay. "Alpha, you getting this?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sending the drones ahead," she confirmed, and the drones scattered. Several went deeper into the facility, down various corridors. Others went to look at the ships.
Considering what to do first, I eventually decided on the ships and turned towards the closest. Humming as I moved, I noticed the gravity felt normal. "Artificial gravity generator?"
"Ah, yes. That is one of the things my scans detected. Gravity here appears to be nearly 1 G. However, from time to time, it fluctuates back to what is normal for Mars. This would tend to point towards a failing artificial gravity unit somewhere within the facility," my VI companion supplied.
"Not surprised. The stuff down here has to be pretty old," I mused, knowing that in reality, it was at minimum, around fifty thousand years old, due to the Reapers' 'cycle.' I found a hatch and a bit of careful prodding got it to finally send out a signal of some sort. I spent a few moments using my suit's onboard computer, along with my Hacking skill to analyze it, before crafting a packet that might work. It took a few tries, but I had the door open within a minute of the first signal.
"Amazing," I breathed as the ship's systems came online, then headed towards the back of the ship. I wanted to check the engine room and make sure that turning something that old on wouldn't get me killed. Also, I wanted to see the drive core for myself. My upgrades were already feeding me data on the ship as we went, and since this was all Prothean tech, it was about the best one could get in the ME universe short of the Reapers.
It was obvious when we found it, as it produced a visible distortion around itself. My suit's scanners began feeding me information as I moved over to a holographic panel. "Alpha? Any luck translating this?"
"Apologies, master Reynolds. That will take some time, even for me."
"Alright. Well, nothing here is red and flashing, and there are no obvious audible alarms going off…"
"Assuming they use sound and not infrared or some other method of communicating danger," Alpha pointed out. "Neither my sensors nor those on your suit are detecting anything anomalous aside from the engine itself. I judge that it is safe enough to continue, sir."
I nodded. "That was my thought. To the bridge, then. And Alpha, let me know if you find any of whatever's inside that engine with the drones."
"I already have, sir. There is a very large stockpile, immediately below the hanger."
"That's great news. Do me a favor? Estimate the size of how much one of these ships would need by the volume of the engine. Just assume it's a solid chunk. It's probably not, but assume. Then… set aside ten times that amount, if there's enough. I want to take some to play with."
"Very well. What do you plan to do with it?"
"Make a ship, obviously," I shrugged. "Actually, if there's enough, double it, Alpha."
"Of course, sir."
"It probably has other applications, aside from ship drives. And I want a stockpile, in case the replicator can't just replicate more. If it can… we're in business." I was practically salivating at the thought. The one thing Mass Effect tech had over every other tech tree I had so far, the one clear advantage, was short haul FTL in real space.
The Phoenix could do short jumps to hyperspace and back out, but the engine didn't like it—wasn't meant for it. Then again, it was built from the principles of Goa'uld tech, which was canonically scraped from Atlantean tech. It was, put simply, a MacGyver'd version of another race's MacGyvering. I hadn't seen the need to upgrade the engines on the Phoenix since it was just a test ship and would soon go into storage as a museum piece. I already had access to Asgard and Atlantean engine designs—it's where I got the Asgardian replicator from.
But even then, canonically, those engines hadn't liked short jumps. They ran better on long hauls, at a minimum of an hour run time. Mass Effect drives, on the other hand, were built on the complete opposite principle—short hauls were best, and anything longer than across a solar system or into the neighboring solar system only a few light years away was best done by mass relay. Ironically, the Phoenix would beat any Mass Effect ship to Alpha Centauri, but a Mass Effect ship would run better and not risk damaging its engine in a run from Earth to the moon.
My thought was to combine the two technologies. I was already thinking up a design for a working prototype. An array of hybrid naquadah arc reactors for power, distributed out across the ship. An eezo core for mass effect fields to lower its mass and achieve short jump FTL. An Atlantean hyper drive. Shields, life support, and all the usual necessities. Have the thing remote piloted by Alpha for the first few test runs, before I risked it in person.
I'll need to test how reduced mass from a mass effect field works in hyperspace. The ME field could cause the ship to explode, or it could improve jump time/distances and power consumption significantly. It'd basically be FTL inside FTL.
The science behind hyperdrives says you aren't actually moving faster than light, you're inside another dimension that allows you to achieve higher than relativistic speeds—but that you do retain a bit of that speed coming out into normal space. Not all of it, but you're going nearly 1C coming out and need to brake. But the biggest difference is that hyperspace is basically a shortcut—allowing you to skip some of the distance between Point A and Point B.
So, if you were to engage a realspace FTL drive inside of that other dimension and achieve actual FTL in that dimension… what happens? I want to know.
Although, technically, ME fields don't actually increase your speed, they just lower your mass enough that the old thrust-to-weight ratio takes over and your normal engines propel you faster, because they have less theoretical mass to push. Still, less theoretical mass inside hyperspace should lead to some sort of faster travel. Assuming it doesn't explode.
After exploring the bridge, we checked out the rest of the facility. It wasn't actually all that large, having the hangar, what was probably a mess hall, obvious living quarters, what looked to be a medical facility, what was either a second medical facility or a lab of some sort, what may have been a recreation room, a security room with weapons (that I took samples from), and what looked like a control and communication room.
"Oh hey, neat," I grinned as I spotted something behind what looked like a bar as we passed through the rec room on our way back.
"What is it, sir?" Alpha asked, pausing as I went to retrieve my find.
I held up three full, unopened bottles—one of an almost glowing blue, the other a light amber, the third red like blood. "Thousand year old alien space alcohol. Scanners say it's safe to drink. What do you think? Should make for good souvenirs, right," I grinned under my helmet.
"It belongs in a museum, sir. Even just opening them would reduce their astronomical value."
"Absolutely not opening them," I agreed. "But I'll definitely use the replicator to make more."
"I was not aware you drank."
"I don't. But for thousand year old alien space wine? I'll make an exception."
We made it out onto the surface of Mars, where a second, much larger ship was waiting—microbots very carefully loading the eezo into its cargo hold. A stream of microbots brought a much smaller sample over to the Phoenix and loaded it onboard. I had so many plans for the basketball sized sample sitting in a cube of microbots.
After our little jaunt across the solar system, I had enough points to buy further into the Stargate tech tree, and had finally gotten to the highest tiers of all of the main races that actually appeared in the show, that I remembered. I still hadn't maxed it out, but I had the feeling that higher levels would get into things like the mysterious aliens from SG Universe, who built stars. I didn't really need that level of bullshit yet—eventually, sure, but there were smaller scale things I wanted to do. Namely, I had access to all of the knowledge of scientists like Nirrti, Anubis, Merlin, Janus, Loki, and others—and two of those had been ascended beings who then descended and brought a bunch of knowledge with them.
Between those and my other tech trees, namely MCU, Alita, and Cyberpunk, I intended to do some experimenting. Creating a designer body and transferring my consciousness into it should be easy-peasy, according to my knowledge. I would even be able take backups of my mind so that if anything happened to me, I could just be popped back into a clone. It wasn't quite the same thing as a consciousness transfer, that is, a transfer of the soul, but it was close enough. I just needed to build the tech. But before that, I knew generally what was required to get eezo to generate the little tumors/nodules that allowed races to use biotics, but hadn't advanced that far in the tech tree yet.
Looks like I have a new goal. I could earn a quick hundred points in a few hours, going to Alpha Centauri and back. If I made contact with an Asari somewhere and fucked her, I'd get another two hundred. But I'd rather hold off on first contact, for now. And as amusing as it'd be to Kirk it and have aliens' first impression of humanity to be horny space orcs, we should probably be a bit more professional than that.
Eventually, I decided against the jaunt out of the solar system, for now. I'd make do with what I had. With that in mind, I had a look at my menu.
Leon Reynolds. Experience: 0xp. Points: 410.
Shop
Tech Trees:
1. Horizon (Game) II. -100 points.
2. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) II. -100 points.
3. Terminator II. -100 points.
4. Cyberpunk II. -100 points.
5. Mass Effect II. -100 points.
6. Stargate VI. -100 points.
7. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) IV. -100 points.
Upgrades:
None available.
2 days until refresh.
Tech Tree
1. Mass Effect I.
2. Stargate V.
3. Marvel (Cinematic Universe) III.
4. Big Hero 6 (Movie Universe) Max.
5. Battle Angel Alita (Manga) I.
6. Terminator I.
7. Cyberpunk I.
8. Horizon (Game) I.
Upgrades
1. Fast Learner.
2. Mechanical Savant.
3. MacGyver's Apprentice.
4. Nimble Fingers.
5. Crash Override.
6. Bishop Administrator.
7. Sell By.
8. Neural Mancer.
9. CAD Master.
I went ahead and bought Mass Effect II and III, MCU V, and Horizon II—which maxed out that last one. The information began to settle and a smile pulled at my lips.
ME II had what I needed to get biotics working, but III gave me a greater understanding of that process and ensured it would be much more reliable, safe, and controlled. It also gave me everything needed to understand the modern tech of all of the races of the current cycle. I had a feeling that level IV would get me Collector and/or Prothean tech, while V would possibly be Reaper tech, or at least approaching it.
MCU V finally got me Stark's nanite tech. The sheer versatility had my metaphorical dick hard, while the way Stark completely wasted them by just using them in a suit left me disgusted. With my existing tech, I could already see so many different ways to apply them—from medical nanites patrolling the body and keeping it healthy, to use in construction, to uses augmenting humans with nano-scale cybernetics. I already had access to both Asgard and Atlantean derived nanites and AI, but almost every instance of those had gone rogue. But I had eight different sources of VI to AI now, and between those I was pretty sure I could make a sane AI that wouldn't turn on its masters. One that could run on a body made of nanites, or run a nano-swarm within someone. There was other tech in the tree, but that was what I was most excited to start using.
Surprisingly, it was Horizon II that looked to be the most useful in the near future. Apparently, in that setting, they had just figured out complete ageless biological immortality at some point—along with force fields, smart matter, nanite weapons, short range personal teleportation, various energy weapons, and even brainwashing tech. That was on top of the terraforming dinosaurs and biomass consuming war machines.
I had a lot of work to do in the near future, it seemed.
"Please hold all questions until the end of the presentation," Alpha said into the many microphones on the podium in front of her. "I assure you that what you are about to witness is real. At the end if the presentation, I will select three people to come with me and verify the authenticity of the footage I'm about to present. With that out of the way, let's begin."
I looked away from the hologram as the footage from our Mars expedition played, paying half an ear as Alpha began narrating to a crowd of reporters and government officials from various countries. It had been a week since we stepped foot on Mars and this was our press conference to break the news to the world.
While Alpha was busy with that, I was remotely working on a few different projects at the time time.
First up was an upgraded body being created in the underwater lab. Well, I was watching as Alpha did all the real work after I'd given her the design specs and everything I wanted tested. A clone of myself was being grown in a tube and subjected to eezo during its development. As that happened, medical nanites within the body removed tumors as they formed and carefully managed the growth and placing of eezo nodules in the body.
I knew how Jack was made, as that was covered in the ME tech tree, but also a bit about how Asari worked and how they could manipulate biotics naturally and why—that being genetic manipulation courtesy of the Protheans. I didn't actually have the knowledge that would allow me to do the same sort of genetic modification to my own clone body, but it was the goal eventually. For now, I was content to try to see if I could find ways to improve the process mechanically—and so far, I seemed to be having some pretty nice successes.
The second big project I was working on was in my shipyard on Mercury. With more ME knowledge, I now knew how they used Element Zero to make superior materials. I was using it to conduct a few tests on the other two wunder materials I had—naquadah and trinium. I knew how to make naquadria, the radioactive, higher energy version of naquadah, but that wasn't what I wanted given just how unstable it was. No, what I was after was trying to develop further down the 'weapons-grade' line, which made the super dense mineral even more dense. Mass effect fields were perfect for that. Trinium likewise required refining to make it useful, and I was using mass effect fields to see if I could make it stronger. Then, there was the Asgard alloy of those two materials and carbon. So far, I had been able to create the alloy with the base materials and the stuff was ridiculously strong, but I wanted to see if I could make an improved version after enhancing the naquadah and trinium going into it.
Finally, I was keeping an eye on the production facility making a zero point module, or ZPM. Just one for now, to test and see how long it would take and whether I could do it safely, but so far everything seemed to be going smoothly and it looked to be on track to completion within a few weeks, thanks to Asuran tech having improved on the ZPM creation process, allowing the nanite-based race to turn them out far quicker than their creators. If I could just make those at will, I'd be making sure every ship I made was powered by one.
"…Yes, I am in that video." I looked up and found the Q session had begun. "And no, I wasn't wearing a space suit. That's because I am the first of what master Reynolds hopes to be many virtual intelligence constructs—a VI with a physical, cybernetic body and a presence in the real world."
"That's impossible!" someone in the crowd shouted.
"On the contrary." Fishing a pocket knife out, Alpha proceeded to cut into her own hand, to gasps from the crowd.
I snorted. "I shouldn't have suggested giving them the T2 treatment."
The reporters' tune changed as Alpha degloved herself and showed off her mechanical hand. Someone asked a question and the VI spoke up. "Normally, this would be quite painful. However, one of the benefits of being a cybernetic organism is that I can disable my pain receptors. Unfortunately, without my synthetic skin, this means that I can't feel anything from this hand, except for the pressure sensors built into the fingers. Next question?"
"Who exactly is going to have ownership over the site?"
"We've already begun setting up a semi-permanent habitat for a large research team. Our company will manage the habitat, transport to and from the site, and have the final say over who gets to go and what, if anything, comes back—"
"One company shouldn't have absolute control over something of such historical significance!" someone yelled in the small crowd.
Alpha simply stared at the man. "My creator found it. We got there first. We're currently the only ones capable of getting there in a reasonable timeframe. Master Reynolds owns all of the equipment on-site. If he wanted, we could put a force field dome over it and study it ourselves, and neither you nor anyone else on Earth would hear anything about it until he started trickling out technological advances over the next few years. As you can see, my master has opted not to do that. We are opening berths for a hundred people picked from the brightest minds of every nation on Earth, provided they have the credentials and can pass some basic competence tests to verify those credentials, so we don't get clout chasers or other people causing problems.
"Given that Earth doesn't have one central government, it would be best if ownership of the site remained in, if not neutral hands, then at least the hands of someone whose goals you know. This way, conflicting national interests can't come into play. Our goals here are simple: learn everything we can and advance the human race into the future, as a whole. That is why everyone will be signing a contract stipulating that all information discovered from the Martian site will be released free and uncensored to the public. Every government and corporate entity who wants to participate must sign a contract stipulating that any technology derived from the site be patented under the open source model. In fact," Alpha picked up a briefcase sitting at her feet and opened it, before taking out a sheet of paper and holding it up.
"This contract. As you can see, it's already been signed by the owner of New Horizons, master Leon Reynolds. New Horizons is willing to lead the way here. The rest of you simply need to follow."
"Maybe I should work on her tact module," I chuckled, shifting my attention—
Alpha looked up from the camera, towards the sky. I watched as her body tensed and she leapt, only for the screen to white out a second later and cut to black.
I blinked as a sinking feeling spread, ice forming in my stomach. "Alpha… what just happened?"
"An explosion, sir," the VI announced, producing a hologram of herself beside the one I was watching. "My local platform is still operational. Switching to its optical feed."
The view changed, showing a view from what seemed to be the inside of hell. The venue for the press conference had been outdoors, in a small park in front of New Horizons' first physical office—office space we were renting in one of the big skyscrapers in downtown Miami. The park was on fire. I could make out bits of blasted trees, concrete, glass, body parts and blood stains.
The feed turned as Alpha turned her head, peripheral vision showing that Alpha hadn't escaped unscathed herself—her artificial skin had been burned completely off and her endoskeleton was partially damaged. Finally, her vision zoomed on the mangled upper torso of a body. The view stumbled and shuddered as Alpha shambled over, bare metal hands reaching down and rolling over the body—
I closed my eyes and turned away, wishing I could forget what I had seen. Half a face I didn't recognize, the other half burned, pulped meat. Chest caved in. Very dead. One of the few relatively intact bodies left, of those people who had been gathered.
"How the fuck did this happen, Alpha? What happened?" I demanded, my hands clenching on my chair even as I forced myself not to yell at the VI. "Was this some sort of terrorist bombing, or was it targeted at us?"
If I had been there… If I hadn't just sent Alpha, because I was feeling lazy today and didn't want to deal with the media, that would be me. Someone tried to kill me!
"I'm going back over sensor logs and scraping footage from local sources and our satellite coverage now."
The screen lit up again and shots from multiple angles filled the projection. On all of them, a red circle highlighted something very hard to pick out against the sky as it moved, frame by frame, over the city. "There was a brief ping on radar off the eastern coast, one hundred and fifty miles out. I believe this to be the moment of release. Analyzing the images taken, it appears that a missile was fired from a ninth generation fighter. I'm tracking it now. It appears to be a Chengdu J-55, heading east at thirty thousand feet, currently cruising at Mach 3.1."
"Beam me onto the Phoenix. We're going to follow. Beam him aboard in flight. I want to know who sent him and why. And when I find out, there's going to be hell to pay."
This was an attempt at a direct attack on me and I couldn't have people thinking that this sort of thing would go without consequences.